mediatorinthemaking.com

U.S. News & World Report’s annual listing of best careers is out. And … drum roll please … mediator is included for the first time. You’ll find it under the headers, Best Careers for a Changing Job Landscape and 31 Careers With Bright Futures.

One factor leading U.S. News to give mediator the nod this year is its resistance to offshoring. It makes sense. We can’t very well have all of our conflict resolution occurring across the vast oceans or continents.

Each career listed comes with a day-in-the-life feature, and an executive summary. Considering what I’ve learned thus far from experienced pros, I’d say these pieces are pretty on point.

The pros noted are that

• Mediators can provide a better alternative to hiring a lawyer when conflict is unresolved, as mediators “can often help resolve a dispute less expensively and with less conflict…”
• “Most mediators love their work, helping people beat their swords into plowshares.”

And the cons…

• Mediators outnumber mediation jobs.
• Low barriers to entering the field (just a 40 hour training) continue the overpopulation.
• Overpopulation of the field means “most mediators do not earn a middle-class income for one to five years.”

This matches well the message in Jeffrey Krivis’ and Naomi Lucks’ recently published, “How to Make Money as a Mediator (And Create Value for Everyone).” Chapter one can be summed up thusly: If you love mediation, if you live for it, if you work very hard every day to build up your skills and connections, you have a chance at putting food on the table doing something you love. Otherwise, pursue something that will better suit you.

So. Do you fit Krivis’ and Lucks’ profile of the top tier mediators?

• Do you love mediating? Are you good at it?
• Do you inspire trust? Are you likeable?
• Have you cultivated relationships with referral sources, or will you be able to?
• Are you ready to work hard? (Long days, late nights, and less time with family and friends.)

If you’ve answered yes to all of the above, you might have a good chance at what’s being reported as one of the top careers with a bright future in the U.S.

If not, I hope you won’t despair. I believe the skills trained mediators possess are vital to our local, national and global communities. The more I learn about conflict, the more I see how people trained in conflict resolution are desperately needed in our offices, stores, schools, government bodies, busy streets, families and friendships. Even if it’s not your bread and butter, you can take heart in knowing that you’re part of a movement.

I recently attempted to simultaneously play party and mediator in a workplace conflict, and felt the burn of my green tendencies.

With my new skills, I find myself entering into super-conflict-resolver mode whenever faced with a conflict. Hooray for seeking experience wherever one can find it. This is giving me, and folks around me, ample opportunity to experience my strengths and green tendencies to be improved.

During a basic mediation training role play, I co-mediated a heated dispute between a couple who had recently split after infidelity. The characters were drawn to be extremely emotional: yelling, swearing, overflowing with anger. Early in the session, I demonstrated compassion and empathy, without endangering my neutral status, which helped each party feel comfortable and valued. But … as their emotions, decibel levels, and the tension in the room increased, my warmth gave way to an almost robotic persona which frustrated the parties. My coach helped me identify a way out of this in the moment.

In the face of heightened emotion, as I enter super-conflict-resolver mode, I instinctively become flat. Very flat. My speech becomes slow and deliberate, almost monotone. I am aware of the shift, and yet …It’s almost as though I think the only way to diffuse powerful emotions and maintain focus on the path to resolution is to have no emotion myself. Consciously, I don’t believe this.

But alas, we humans do learn slowly and instincts are very difficult to force to evolve.

Recently, this automaton response lead to a quite visceral reaction from one of the three parties involved in a workplace conflict. This party was already on the defensive, as a coworker and I approached addressing an issue in what unfortunately came down to the old two-against-one game rather than teamwork.

She lashed out at me in a way that turned a minor issue into a major conflict, and provided quite a test for my newly developing skills in conflict resolution and relationship preservation.

While her lashing out shocked me, I realize where it came from. The compassionate me engenders trust and comfort. The automaton me builds rage and paints me as a patronizing jerk who talks without listening. As a mediator and as a human being, I would prefer to be the former at all times – or at least most times.

I will be constantly vigilant in avoiding this pitfall.